Highly integrated transmitting and receiving phased array with multi-channels and high efficiency in K/Ka-band SatCom application

A highly integrated K/Ka-band phased array with duplexing channels for transmitting and dual circularly polarized channels for receiving is presented. To increase both the efficiency and channel isolation, a novel architecture is proposed to integrate the horn antenna, polarizer, ortho-mode transducer (OMT), and filters within a very compact radiating aperture as the element. Based on this element, one large-scale phased array with 416 elements was developed, fabricated, and measured. Experimental results show that the proposed phased array has high aperture efficiency of larger than 56% in both transmitting and receiving channels, high channel isolations of 50 dB between different frequency channels and 20 dB between different polarization channels. Furthermore, beam scanning performance within ±20° and ±18° at 20 and 30 GHz are achieved, respectively. The developed multifunctional phased array is an attractive and feasible frontend for K-/Ka- band SatCom system.